Monday, March 30, 2009

Icon painting, step three

I don't much like driving in the rain, especially on the freeway. Driving crowded freeways through San Francisco after dark is even worse. Lately it rained on a lot of Sundays which is when the icon workshops are held in San Francisco. Before daylight savings and the advancing season the class let out after dark, even worse. Hence my lack of progress. Yesterday I finally went back to the class and this is the result of my efforts.

The background colors are all filled in now. In egg tempera one works from dark to light so these are the darkest colors, the roskrish or base colors. The flesh and hair base color is called sankir. Can you believe that the pink robes of the angel will eventually be light blue? My dark blue came out too roughly textured so I sanded it just a bit. The sankir is supposed to be opaque but the other roskrish colors may have some translucence. I worked a bit thick on some of them. I added another layer of the brown sankir color to the flesh and hair because it was not opaque enough.

All pigments are traditional egg tempera: powdered period pigments mixed with egg yolk (and a bit of wine in the egg yolk mixture in the Russian tradition).

3 comments:

Liadain - It is described as a "Guardian Angel" on the Icon Arts website:

"This is the Guardian Angel of whom it is said in Psalm 90:11: God "has given his angels charge over thee; to guard thee in all thy ways." These angels protect us and guide us in our spiritual life.The small child the angel holds in his arm represents the soul of the person whom he is assigned to. "

Gina B - Thank you. I am very pleased with my gold. The key was the prep work: careful application of bole and sanding until it was as perfectly smooth as I could make it, going up to 1000 grit sandpaper.